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by AnnaFaie



Category: Football RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-23
Updated: 2018-07-23
Packaged: 2019-06-15 00:27:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,203
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15400932
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnnaFaie/pseuds/AnnaFaie
Summary: It’s as if he’d been holding his breath since their return from the World Cup and only now finds he can breathe again.





	Home

Gareth opens his eyes slowly, and immediately squints in the bright morning sunlight. He’s disoriented for a moment, unused to waking without an alarm. The clock on the wall tells him it’s almost 9AM.

\- I was wondering when you’d wake up, - Harry’s voice is amused.

He’s on the sofa, hair damp, dressed in low-slung running trousers, a towel around his neck. He sets his iPad aside and pulls the towel off.

\- Did you just come back from a run? - Gareth mutters indignantly, sitting up and running a hand through his hair.

\- I remember a certain manager constantly telling us that fitness is lost twice as quickly as it’s gained.

\- Clever bugger, him.

Harry gets up in one languid movement, all long limbs and sculpted muscles. He’s too big to be truly graceful, but there is a controlled power in each movement, strength honed by years of running and weights. Gareth’s eyes run along the length of Harry’s body, admiring, unashamed. It’s taken him months to conquer his natural shyness when it came to Harry, to stop averting his eyes and feeling slightly embarrassed at how the mere sight of Harry’s body made him feel.

The bed creaks when Harry flops onto it, arms outstretched, groaning as he stretches to his full and considerable length. His feet dangle over the edge of the bed.

\- Did you forget to stretch again? - Gareth asks.

\- It was just a 45-minute UT2, mother hen, - Harry turns onto his stomach, facing Gareth, eyes bright. - Slept well? I was going to drag you along but you kind of told me to fuck off and went back to sleep…

\- I’m sure I did. Having the time to sleep at all is a novelty, and I’d been keeping up with a 24-year-old half the night. Shall we order breakfast?

Gareth makes to get up, but his leg is caught and he is pulled back, and he finds himself pressed against Harry, the younger man’s nose nuzzling his neck. He makes a noise of amusement, but lets himself be pulled back into Harry’s bulk. Harry’s skin is warm and still damp, and, frankly, Gareth doesn’t really want to go anywhere. Not when Harry is placing tiny kisses on the back of his neck, not when it’s either this or the emails he needs to answer and the calls he has to make.

\- I think you kept up splendidly. - Harry pauses. - Can you stay a couple days more, do you think? - His breath tickles the back of Gareth’s neck.

\- I’m sure Katie won’t be too happy if I did.

Harry doesn’t reply. Neither quite know whether this is nothing but an escape from their respective jobs and family duties. Both realise it’s too naive to hope for a grandiose finale with white picket fences. But both also know they will have more of these stolen days in expensive but impersonal hotel rooms, where nothing else will exist, if only for a day or two. It feels inevitable, so inevitable that Gareth hasn’t even bothered imagining a future without Harry.

Gareth reaches out and pulls Harry’s arm round him, pressing his lips to the back of Harry’s knuckles. It’s a gesture of reverence, of unspoken love.

\- I’ve missed you. - Harry sounds so young, and he is, Gareth remembers, little more than a boy. Something inside him aches at the simple plaintiveness in Harry’s voice. Gone is the desperate hunger of the previous night, the deeply physical need to possess and remember and reclaim him again. Harry seems meek now, almost pleading.

Gareth turns and kisses Harry, hand cupping Harry’s face. Harry’s lips are pliant and taste of deliciously bitter coffee, and he relaxes into Gareth with a long sigh into the manager’s mouth.

\- I missed you too. Every day.

That is the simple truth of it. He woke up the day after their return from Russia with a sinking feeling and a sense of undefinable loss.   
His wife merely hummed knowingly and ushered the kids to their grandparents’, letting him have the house to himself. He’d roamed the quiet rooms like a ghost that day, not quite sure what he was meant to do. Holiday. He’d sneered at that, feeling trapped.

Two days later, Harry had messaged him. A simple “you okay, boss?”, and Gareth had spent the rest of the afternoon grinning like a besotted teenager.

They’d Whatsapped each other constantly after that, about music and movies, about Harry’s three-day golfing retreat, the children. Both had admitted that the come-down after those heady, adrenaline-drenched weeks in Russia left them feeling empty and irritable. Neither had mentioned the few stolen kisses in the corridor in St. Petersburg, the fumbled, hurried sex on the one occasion they found themselves left alone in the changing room. Eventually, Harry asked Gareth if the manager had any upcoming London meetings. The invitation had been about as subtle as a punch to the face.

It feels strange, now, being in bed with Harry. It had only been a few weeks since they’d last seen each other, but it feels longer. There are more lines on Harry’s tired face, and his hair is a little longer. There’s a sense of displacement and familiarity, like coming back home after a long absence. Gareth brings Harry closer, enveloping I’m in a possessive embrace, twining their legs together. Yes, this feels like coming home in a way that his home didn’t. It’s as if he’d been holding his breath since their return from the World Cup and only now finds he can breathe again. It feels pathetically juvenile and liberating in equal measures.

\- What? - Harry squints at him, trying to decipher his expression.

\- Nothing. Us. Running around like a pair of criminals.

Harry’s teeth capture Gareth’s earlobe, teasing.

\- Well, no one asked you to be so good at hugging, boss. What the hell am I supposed to do without you now?

The sentiment is sweet and childish. Gareth runs his fingers through Harry’s thick, soft hair, down to the muscled back. He enjoys the way Harry seems to relax under his touch, as if Gareth has some kind of magical ability to release the pent-up energy coursing through that body. He’s always been able to bring Harry’s nervous energy under control with a touch or a quiet word. He guesses that’s why the younger man had gravitated towards him, why they initially became close.

\- I suppose that yes, I can only blame myself for being so bloody tactile. Even the press and the fans have noticed. You should see some of the Twitter comments…

Harry chuckles, shifting, stretching, lazy and warm, and Gareth doesn’t want to stop touching him, feeling the warmth of that smooth tanned skin and the hardness of muscle beneath it. He knows he shouldn’t need Harry this way, but can’t deny himself the basic truth that he does, and that with every passing day this need weaves itself into the very fabric of his being. It’s a simple, physical need, like thirst, like hunger. It had grown somewhere deep in his stomach, and it had been too late, too late when Gareth realised he’d fallen for his captain.

His fingers curl around Harry’s, squeezing.

\- Fancy a second shower? - Gareth asks.


End file.
